


love at last sight

by silverkatana



Category: H.O.T. (Band), SECHSKIES (Band)
Genre: Goodbyes, M/M, More angst, it's raining and i'm sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 20:21:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkatana/pseuds/silverkatana
Summary: in which jaeduck decides that it's time to leave.





	love at last sight

**Author's Note:**

> it was raining so of course i decided it would a great time to churn out more angst yet again

“I’m leaving,” Jaeduck says, two-thirty at night when the two of them are sitting at the bar with a glass of wine each.

 

Seungho doesn’t know how to respond at first. He stares at Jaeduck, at the man who faces away from him and swishes the wine in the glass idly, trails his gaze over the familiar long eyelashes and sharp jawline and loose clothes that hang off his frame.

 

“Oh,” he’s not sure how else to respond, and he reverts to taking a sip out of his wine glass instead. “To where?”

 

Jaeduck shrugs nonchalantly, downing the last few dark droplets of red wine as he sets the glass down. “I’ve been looking at apartments. I’ll move out by the end of the week.” His gaze flits to Seungho, and he hesitates for the briefest of seconds before he utters out a, “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.” Seungho is quick to respond, ignoring the way his thoughts spin dizzyingly quick in his mind. 

 

The silence diffuses into the air thick and heavy, yet the two of them pretend not to notice it - or perhaps he’s the only one to realise it - and Seungho hurries to finish the last few droplets of red wine before he stands with a strained smile that he hopes Jaeduck can’t see through. “I think I’ve drunk enough for tonight,” he speaks with a tone of forced casualness, “You?” 

 

The younger of the two lets out a noncommittal hum in a form of reply. “I’ll take the glasses to the kitchen, then,” Seungho finds himself offering, and the faintest flicker of surprise in Jaeduck’s eyes that he masks quickly tells him that he’s acting a little out of the ordinary. “You go and rest, it’s late and you have schedules tomorrow.”

 

“Thanks, hyung,” Jaeduck murmurs, and doesn’t protest against Seungho’s words, moving towards his bedroom as Seungho picks up the glasses and walks into the kitchen. He lets the water run from the sink, cold against his skin as the liquid runs over his hands and into the empty glasses. 

 

He washes the wine glasses with languid, slowing movements of his fingers, and at some point minutes later he finds that he’s set the glasses down and is just staring blankly at his kitchen wall. His throat burns, a mixture of bitter acceptance and jaundiced disbelief, and he lets the water slip down his skin for a little while more before a sigh flutters past his lips and he switches the tap off.

 

He’s heading back to his room when he walks past Jaeduck’s, door wide open even though the lights are all switched off. Alexanduck is curled up at the doorway, and he forces a smile that slips almost immediately as the thought flashes through his mind,  _ they were supposed to be our dogs. Not mine. _

 

“Seungho-hyung?” Jaeduck’s voice sounds in the two forty-five am silence, soft and vulnerable and lonely. 

 

His footsteps slow, coming to a halt at Jaeduck’s doorway. The younger is already curled up in bed, blankets drawn up to his shoulders, but the light shining in from the corridors illuminate his features enough for Seungho to realise that Jaeduck is staring straight at him.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jaeduck breathes out.

 

“Don’t be,” he says, grasping the door handle and closing it, “Goodnight, Jaeduck.”

 

As he crashes into the comfort of his own bed and waits for sleep to claim him, he finds himself realising that he’s lying through his teeth.

 

_ You should be sorry. _

 

Sleep refuses to come to him, and he lies in bed soundlessly; he hates every moment of it, of thinking too much.

 

_ Why? _

 

Thinking too much comes with a rush of frustration, of lamentation, of realisations that he’d rather not have touched upon at this point in time.

 

_ Because I love him. _

 

It’s the only conclusion that he can come up with. One that he tries to deny, of course, wrestling with his own thoughts and feelings in the dark of three in the morning, but all it really brings about is more thoughts of Jaeduck and further confirmation of his feelings.

 

He doesn’t quite know whether he wants to laugh or cry, so he stares up at his ceiling and curses whoever is pulling the strings to fate for the feelings that he’d rather not have; the feelings that he realises he has far too late, the love too wrong to happen but too right to let pass by.

 

_ But no matter what you do now, Jaeduck is leaving. _

 

Perhaps he should have done something when he still had the chance.

 

Perhaps he should have realised his own feelings sooner.

 

Perhaps he could have fallen out of love with Jaeduck before he left.

 

Seungho closes his eyes, and wills for sleep to come.

 

_ It’s too late now. _

  
  
  


Hours turn into days, and days turn into a week, and by the end of the week Seungho is finding it harder and harder to maintain eye contact with Jaeduck and by the time Jaeduck is packing his bags ready to move out Seungho is too aware of the feelings that he’s developed far too late.

 

“Jaeduck-ah,” he blurts out before he can contain his own words that bubble in his throat like lava spilling out of a volcano - it’s Sunday afternoon and Jaeduck’s almost done with packing the last of his things into boxes, and he turns with a radiant smile and a quiet ‘yes, hyung?’ that only makes Seungho’s heart ache in ways that he didn’t know it could before. “Why?”

 

Jaeduck tilts his head, his uncombed hair shifting. “Why I’m moving out? I think they were right, you know? How we won’t be able to find spouses if we keep living together like this?”

 

So innocently phrased, yet to Seungho it feels as though someone had just slapped him across the face with ice cold water in the dead of winter; never explicitly stated, yet to him it rings piercingly in his ears as a too perspicuous euphemism for  _ I’m looking for someone to love who isn’t you. _

 

“Oh,” he utters.

 

“So make sure you get yourself a good wife, okay?” Jaeduck continues, still smiling so brightly as always, “She’ll cook for you a lot better than I can, and she’ll be able to keep you company and support you always, and she’ll be there for you in your hardest times. She’ll be your life partner and you’ll be at the happiest point of your life. Oh! And remember how we said we wanted to be neighbours after marriage? Hold me to that promise, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he echoes weakly.

 

_ You’re smiling so brightly, but every word of yours sounds too much like a last goodbye. _

 

His lungs almost explode in his chest as the longing to let the truth spill out pricks at him and catches at every breath of his. 

 

Maybe Seungho doesn’t  _ want _ to get himself a good wife. Maybe he only wants to cook for Jaeduck and taste Jaeduck’s cooking (albeit not the tastiest food he’s had before), maybe he only wants to enjoy Jaeduck’s company and maybe he’s already had the happiest times of his life after overcoming his hardest times with Jaeduck’s support.

 

Maybe he doesn’t want to be Jaeduck’s neighbour. Maybe he wants to continue living with Jaeduck, only Jaeduck, only him, because he’s the only one who matters.

 

“Why do you look so sad, hyung?” Jaeduck queries.

 

“After all this while, you’re still calling me with formalities,” Seungho mutters out, and a look of confusion passes over Jaeduck’s expression. “You really haven’t changed.”

 

Jaeduck blinks once, then twice, then lights up as if he’s come to a realisation. “Is it because I’ve recently been speaking informally at times? If that’s the case that I’m sorry, now that we won’t be living together anymore I guess I shouldn’t speak to you more formally, right?”

 

“No,” Seungho blurts out so loudly and so sharply that even Edworld awakens from his slumber, “Please don’t. Please just speak to me like you always have. Informal, but with formalities still; please don’t call me any differently.”

 

He has to blink once, twice, thrice to clear the annoying moisture that threatens to well up. Bittersweet regret surfaces in his throat and makes it difficult for him to speak, so he settles on just looking at Jaeduck before the latter realises how close he is to tears.

 

_ If you call me any differently, then it’ll really be a goodbye. _

 

“I won’t,” Jaeduck promises as he begins to seal the last box shut, the one filled with little souvenirs and photographs they’ve bought and taken together both in Korea and in foreign countries.

 

At the end of the week, Jaeduck finishes sealing the last box.

 

And now the house is empty, painfully so, even though the living room is littered all over with generic brown boxes and Jaeduck is sitting right in front of him.

 

Now he’s all alone.

 

“Jaeduck-ah,” he whispers, so quietly that he’s not sure whether Jaeduck can even hear him - he’s not sure whether he wants the younger to hear, anyway - and the words fall out before he can think it through. “I love you.”

 

Jaeduck turns to him, a myriad of emotions trapped behind dark hazy eyes, his gaze searching Seungho’s expression of regret and apology written all across his lowered head. 

 

“Why did you tell me this only now?”

 

It isn’t quite the response that Seungho is expecting, and his head jerks up to meet Jaeduck’s unreadable gaze. 

 

Jaeduck laughs.

 

It sounds crude, dry, and beautiful like an angel’s.

 

“I can’t believe you’re saying this only now,” Jaeduck says, leaning back against one of the boxes, and Seungho’s heart stops beating for a moment as his mind races to process and make sense of Jaeduck’s words.

 

“Answer me honestly, hyung.” Two pairs of dark eyes meet in the light of the Sunday afternoon, one filled with hopeful confusion and hesitance, the other a mess of longing, bitterness and gentle apology. “Did you only realise it after I told you I was leaving?”

 

“Yes.”

 

His admittance is a softly-spoken word that suspends in the air for too long a time, feelings too strong crackling between the two standing in silence in the living room.

 

“I’ve been in love you from the first sight,” Jaeduck confesses all of a sudden.

 

Seungho forgets how to breathe.

 

Jaeduck cracks a smile, and Seungho has lived with him for long enough to recognise immediately that it’s one that is bursting with sorrow.

 

“Hyung,” he says gently, “I fell in love with you at first sight, but you never did the same. Do you know how many years it took for me to fall out of love with you?”

 

There’s a lurch from somewhere within his body, and Seungho is almost convinced that it’s the feeling of his heart dropping from his chest all the way down to his feet.

 

“You fell in love with me after I fell out of love with you,” Jaeduck murmurs, looking up at Seungho with a delicate, wavering smile that the two of them know isn’t one of happiness, “And it’s too late now, hyung.”

 

_ You fell in love with me at first sight, and now I fall in love with you at last sight. _

 

His heart burns, his eyes burn, his throat burns, everything burns.

 

So this is what heartbreak feels like.

 

“I’m sorry,” he finds himself apologising with a crack in his voice as he drops down to his knees and embraces Jaeduck for the last time, feeling the latter’s arms wrap around him in response and his warm hands running up and down his back comfortingly, “I’m sorry.”

 

Jaeduck leans his head against Seungho’s shoulder, and Seungho feels the upward curve of Jaeduck’s lips against his sleeve as the younger of the two whispers out an  _ it’s okay. _

 

He fell in love too late with someone who fell in love too early with him.

 

But on this cruel Sunday afternoon at the end of the week, their time has run out.

 

And now, he bids Jaeduck farewell.

  
  
  



End file.
